Let's Go Back for April 18, 2014

by jmaloni

•Taken from the April 18 Dispatch

Fri, Apr 25th 2014 09:20 pm

40 Years Ago, April 17, 1974

'No parking' an issue

The
League of Women Voters local unit, G.I., presented a request to the Town Board
Monday evening April 15 that the town support the league's quest for bicycle
paths in the community, enacting a "no parking" ordinance on Whitehaven Road
between the Thruway and Stony Point Road.

The
league explained that members had met with Erie County's Highway Department and
found them agreeable to painting a 4-foot lane on either side of the four-lane
highway proposed on Whitehaven Road and expected to be under construction
within the next few weeks. The league contends that a no parking ban in the
4-foot lanes would increase the safety factor to cyclists and pedestrians who
will be using the thoroughfare as a means of getting to the center of town. No
sidewalks have been planned for the area as of yet.

...
The league surveyed occupants of houses and succeeded in obtaining the
agreement of nearly two-thirds of the residents to its plan.

30 Years Ago, April 13, 1984

Ice boom war ends

Removal
of the ice boom got underway last week and ice floes are now floating the
Niagara from Lake Erie with apparently no damage to anyone or anything.

An
unsuccessful suit to block the boom apparently has ended, with Judge John T.
Curtin dismissing the civil action against the state Power Authority and the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission because the county failed to file amended
papers in the 1982 lawsuit.

The
boom for some years has been a source of much controversy, with some farmers
blaming it for a late growing season and homeowners contending it means high
heating bills over a longer period of time.

But
on Grand Island the boom, usually placed in late fall and removed April 1 or
whenever ice in Lake Erie has melted down to more than a 250 square mile ice
cover, means doing away with much of the ice damage that used to occur to homes
and docks along the shoreline here.

20 Years Ago, April 15, 1994

G.I. telephone directory ready

Grand
Island's new official telephone directory will be distributed in the next few
weeks.

Although
the directory was scheduled to be completed in early 1994, book coordinators
encountered a major unforeseen problem with the phone number data purchased for
the residential section of the book. The data contained numerous errors of
monumental proportion and needed to be corrected manually. Although this
created a delay, the main goal was to produce the directory correctly.

Each
and every business, home and apartment on Grand Island will receive a
hand-delivered book for free.

10 Years Ago, April 16, 2004

Fuccillo's 2nd dealership plan approved

The
Fuccillo Automotive Group received approval from the Grand Island Town Board
last week for its proposed Toyota expansion on Alvin Road.

This
followed a two-month long process where the company was trying to get the
wetland replacement proposal approved since the plans included construction of
the 30,000-square-foot facility on more than two acres of existing wetlands. ...

The
mitigation approval is allowing more wetlands to be developed in the Scenic
Woods area.